Contents: The Sir! No Sir! blog is an information clearing house, drawing on a wide variety of sources, to track the unfolding history of the new GI Movement, and the wars that brought the movement to life.
Where applicable, parallels will be drawn between the new movement and the Vietnam era movement which was the focus of the film Sir! No Sir!
Disclaimer: In accordance with title 17 u.s.c. section 107, this material is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes.
The Sir! No Sir! Blog has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is the Sir! No Sir! Blog endorsed or sponsored by the originator. Links are provided to allow for verification of authenticity.

US Govt. [Legislature] - US House of Representatives

October 26, 2009

This article, by Greg Grant, was posted to Military.com, October 26, 2009

It was all things Afghanistan and Pakistan at the House Armed Services Committee with lawmakers weighing the viability of a counterterrorism approach versus population centric counterinsurgency and Afghan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s new strategy. An interesting aspect of this debate is the level of knowledge shown by some members of Congress on everything from the proper troop to civilian ratio called for in classic counterinsurgency doctrine to the intricacies of the Tajik versus Pashtun balance in Afghanistan.
The Obama administration has taken some serious heat in recent days for what former Vice President Dick Cheney called "dithering" over the decision to escalate in Afghanistan or not. The reliably hawkish Tom Donnelly of AEI, part of the escalate often and everywhere crowd, even provided an exhaustive timeline of the Obama administration’s "long road to indecision" that can be found here.
Two prominent retired generals Barry McCaffrey and David Barno, testifying before the HASC Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee on Thursday, both said it was important the administration take some time on this one. McCaffrey pointed to what he called one of the most "shameful" episodes in recent history when former SecDef Donald Rumsfeld claimed he was never asked for his viewpoint on invading Iraq before the war. It is important that the senior Obama administration officials take their time and think through the various options because once they decide, "they will own the decision."
While urging full deliberation, both generals were pretty clear how they want that decision to ultimately turn out. For his part, McCaffrey favors escalation and called the over-the-horizon counterterrorism approach a "silly option." He suggests sending 100,000 more troops, not just the 40,000 reportedly wanted by McChrystal. Promises have been made, he said, and not just at the national level when the Bush administration said the U.S. would lead an effort to rebuild Afghanistan. Young American troops on the ground in Afghanistan, waging a war for the will of the Afghan people, make promises every day that the U.S. will be there for them and protect them if they take sides against the Taliban.
McCaffrey said a tribal and ethnic war is underway for control of both Afghanistan and Pakistan and the security implications of Islamic extremists seizing power in either location are too serious not to escalate the U.S. military commitment to the region. Because of the inability of non-governmental and aid organizations to function in Afghanistan due to the security concerns, he recommended sending at least two engineering brigades and a slew of Army Corps of Engineer folks to work on large development projects.
If the military effort stumbles in Afghanistan and the U.S. were to seriously draw down there, it would likely spell the end of NATO as a military alliance, said Barno. To declare success and pull out now, would simply mean the U.S. military would be forced to re-invade the country at some future date when Islamic radicals take power in Kabul and re-establish a terrorist sanctuary there. Barno also favors an escalation of the troop commitment in Afghanistan along the lines of McChrystal’s rumored 40,000 troop request.
Many Afghans have been forced to choose a side in this war, and they have sided with the U.S. and NATO against the Taliban, said Beth Ellen Cole, of the United States Institute of Peace. A Taliban takeover could condemn many of them to a very bleak future, she said, "we have a lot of exposed people on the ground right now." She pointed to efforts at reconstruction and peacekeeping in both Rwanda and Sierra Leone as examples that the international community can in fact improve the lot of war torn countries.

This article, by Eli Clifton, was posted to ipsnews.net, October 21, 2009

WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (IPS) - StandWithUs - an "organization that ensures that Israel's side of the story is told" - has become increasingly aggressive in challenging the "pro-Israel" credentials of moderate Jewish-American groups, going so far as to suggest that receiving money from Arab donors and supporters of Human Rights Watch undermines a group's commitment to Israel and peace.
J Street - the "Pro-Israel and Pro-Peace" advocacy group - faced criticism last week for accepting contributions from donors who have been critical of Israeli government actions.
But an IPS investigation into the tax records of the donors to StandWithUs, which professes to be ideologically neutral, found a web of funders who support organisations that have been accused of anti-Muslim propaganda and encouraging a militant Israeli and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.
Some of these organisations have tied the origins of Palestinian nationalism to Nazi ideology, and suggested that a vast Muslim conspiracy - in a similar vein to the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion - is mobilising to undermine the U.S. constitution and impose Sharia law.
StandWithUs, known in its tax filings as the "Israel Emergency Alliance", unleashed a flurry of faxes to 160 lawmakers on Oct. 16 expressing concern over their plans to attend the J Street conference, "Driving Change, Securing Peace", in Washington from Oct. 25-28.
The faxes warned lawmakers that while "J Street claims to be 'pro-Israel' and 'pro-peace' and to represent mainstream Jewish opinion, we are troubled because their positions seem to undermine Israel and its search for peace with security. Their views may also contribute to anti-Israel biases and misinformation."
Five members of Congress dropped out of the conference. J Street characterised the campaign as the work of "neoconservatives and their Swift Boat tactics" led by the neoconservative Weekly Standard magazine.
MJ Rosenberg, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a research centre that monitors "conservative misinformation" in the media, told IPS, "These are essentially opponents of the peace process who believe the only way to support Israel is to oppose a diplomatic solution to the conflict."
The biggest donors to StandWithUs since 2005, according to a search of publicly available tax returns, were foundations controlled by Susan Wexner, who has contributed over 850,000 dollars to the group.
Wexner's family founded The Limited, which currently operates such well-known brands as Victoria's Secret, Bath & Body Works, Henri Bendel, C. O. Bigelow, The White Barn Candle Company, and La Senza.
Wexner also made contributions to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD).
MEMRI describes itself as "bridging the language gap which exists between the West and the Middle East, providing timely translations of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu-Pashtu media, as well as original analysis of political, ideological, intellectual, social, cultural, and religious trends in the Middle East".
Critics say the group is a propaganda outlet, and accuse it of mistranslation and overstating the prevalence of anti-Semitism in Middle East media.
"My problem with MEMRI is that it poses as a research institute when it's basically a propaganda operation," wrote the Middle East editor for The Guardian, Brian Whittaker, in an email debate with MEMRI President Yigal Carmon.
"As with all propaganda, that involves a certain amount of dishonesty and deception. The items you translate are chosen largely to suit your political agenda. They are unrepresentative and give an unfair picture of the Arab media as a whole."
The executive director of StandWithUs, Roz Rothstein, responded to IPS, "MEMRI is used by every news publication on the planet. People don't look at MEMRI as right-wing. It's just verbatim Arabic translation. They've never been cited for inaccurate translation."
In 2007, CNN correspondent Atika Shubert and Arabic translators accused MEMRI of mistranslating portions of a Palestinian children's television programme.
"Media watchdog MEMRI translates one caller as saying - quote - 'We will annihilate the Jews,"' said Shubert. "But, according to several Arabic speakers used by CNN, the caller actually says 'The Jews are killing us."'
CAMERA, another media watchdog group, has caught criticism for denying reliable reports of settlement expansions, leading the executive director of the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, Donald Wagner, to describe CAMERA as "a well-known source of extremist pro-Israel propaganda that is routinely challenged by Israeli and international human rights and peace organizations for its consistent misrepresentation of the facts in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies is a policy institute "founded shortly after 9/11 by a group of visionary philanthropists and policymakers to support the defense of democratic societies under assault by terrorism and militant Islamism", according to its website.
However, the group has frequently been cited for pushing a hawkish U.S. foreign policy in Iraq and Iran, and the Christian Science Monitor called it one of the "top neocon think tanks".
Larry and Andrew Hochberg contributed over 400,000 dollars to StandWithUs since 2005 and also contributed to FDD and Honest Reporting, another watchdog group that monitors the media and "exposes cases of bias" against Israel.
Much like MEMRI, Honest Reporting has come under attack for taking words and phrases out of context and for producing the documentary "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West".
Twenty-eight million copies of the film were distributed by direct mail and newspaper inserts before the U.S. presidential election last November.
Regarding the film, Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic wrote that it "takes a serious issue, and a serious threat - that of Islamism - and makes it into a cartoon. Its central argument is that the 'Islamofascism' of today is not only the equivalent of Nazism, but worse than Nazism. This is quite a thing for a Jewish organization to argue."
According to Rothstein, "Obsession is the story of radical Islam."
"Radical Islam has impacted the Middle East greatly," she said. "All this stuff comes from a very fundamentalist religious position and looking at it does not make you right- or left-wing."
Sandra and Lawrence Post contributed just under 70,000 dollars to StandWithUs since 2005 and contributed to MEMRI and Christians United For Israel (CUFI), a U.S. "pro-Israel" Christian organisation founded and chaired by controversial pastor John Hagee.
Neoconservatives and other members of the far-right came into direct conflict with J Street in May 2008 when J Street issued a statement calling on Republican presidential candidate John McCain to "renounce John Hagee once and for all".
Many Jews took offence with Hagee's characterisation of Hitler as doing God's work by helping to bring Jews to Israel to fulfil Biblical prophesy, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) found itself in the difficult position of fighting to keep its pro-Israel credentials while not severing its valuable ties to the Christian-Zionist movement and the Christian Right.
Asked if the philanthropy of their donors reflected a right-wing political leaning by StandWithUs, Rothstein rejected the idea.
"I don't think it's fair since our tent is pretty broad," she said. "Some people call us 'left of centre', others call us 'right of centre' and some call us 'centre"'.
"We see it as our job to help people understand that the founding document of Hamas calls for the elimination of Israel," Rothstein added. "If J Street is interested in negotiating with Hamas - who are absolute fundamentalists and violent - it's like a phony dream to want to sit down with someone who is intending to kill you."
Defenders of J Street see StandWithUs and their supporters very differently.
"They're attacking J Street because J Street supports [U.S. President Barack] Obama's goal of re-starting negotiations," said Rosenberg. "In the old days, if any president put pressure on Israel, the Jewish community would rise up against him. But the community strongly supports this president and these guys are pushing back on Netanyahu's behalf."

October 24, 2009

No to More Troops, Yes to Exit StrategyPresident Obama is weighing a decision on General McChrystal’s request to escalate militarily in Afghanistan by sending 40,000 more troops. Some Members of Congress have spoken out, but more have not. Some are saying that they want to wait and see what the President announces. But now is the time to have influence on the President’s decision, not afterwards when it is a done deal. That’s why we need Members of Congress to take a stand against escalation now.House ActionsThere are three key ways for Members of the House to affect President Obama’s decision: to speak out publicly against a troop increase; to co-sponsor Rep. Lee’s bill HR 3699 prohibiting an increase in troops; and to co-sponsor Rep. McGovern’s bill HR 2404 calling for an exit strategy from our military occupation of Afghanistan.Senate ActionsThere are two key ways for Senators to affect President Obama’s decision: to speak out publicly against a troop increase and to introduce legislation in opposition to a troop increase and in favor of an exit strategy from our military occupation of Afghanistan or in favor of a timetable for military withdrawal.
So, what we are asking you to do is call your representatives in Congress – or any Member of Congress you feel comfortable calling (all phone numbers are given in the spreadsheet below – click on the spreadsheet and use arrows to scroll up and down – click the second tab for the Senate – or you can just call the switchboard at 202-225-3121 and be transferred to the Rep or Senator’s office) – try to get a staff person who handles Afghanistan on the phone, and:

forMembers of the House:

If their office has not co-sponsored the McGovern bill (current co-sponsors are shown in the spreadsheet below), ask them to co-sponsor it.

If their office has co-sponsored the McGovern bill but not the Lee bill, ask them to co-sponsor the Lee bill.

Ask them If they are not shown in the list below as having taken a position against sending more troops, ask them if they have taken a position against sending more troops; and urge them to take a position now against sending more troops.
(Here is a script for calling House Members.)

for Senators:

Ask them if they have taken a position against sending more U.S. troops. If they have not done so, ask them to take a position now against sending more U.S. troops.

Ask them to introduce legislation in opposition to sending more troops and in favor of an exit strategy from our occupation from Afghanistan or in favor of a timetable for military withdrawal.
(Here is a script for calling Senators.)

Then – this is important – we want you to report your results on this website — what did the office say? – using the comments section for this blog, so people around the country can see who has taken a stand and who has not.Tell us if these Members of Congress have taken a stand against sending more U.S. troops.Click on the comment link to add your reportback. If the Congressional office directs you to a website or press clips that documents the Representative’s position, or you come across such links, please post the URLs in your reportbacks.
The groups organizing this project want to end the war. But the first step to ending the war is not to deepen it. If McChrystal’s request is approved, it will likely lengthen the war by many years. Thank you for participating! Please spread the word by spreading this URL: http://noescalation.org!

*Note: Our starting point in the spreadsheet in judging whether a House Member opposes sending more troops is whether they

Signed a Sept. 25 McGovern letter in opposition to sending more troops or

Have co-sponsored the Lee bill (59 Members have done one of these two things.)

We’ll update this as we get your feedback; in particular, if you have links to websites or press articles documenting opposition, please post them in the comments.

This article was posted by Robert Naimann, to After Downing Street, October 22, 2009

If there were ever a time when the peace movement should be able to have an impact on U.S. foreign policy, that time should be now. If there were ever a time for extraordinary effort to achieve such an impact, that time is now.
The war in Afghanistan is in its ninth year. McChrystal's proposal could continue it for another ten years, at a likely cost of a trillion dollars, and many more lives of U.S. soldiers and Afghan civilians. The contradiction between domestic needs and endless war was never more apparent. Congress fights over whether we can "afford" to provide every American with quality health care, but every health care reform proposal on the table will likely cost less than McChrystal's endless war. A recent CNN poll says 6 in 10 Americans oppose sending more troops.Democratic leaders in Congress are deeply skeptical: as far back as June, Rep. Murtha and Rep. Obey voted for Rep. McGovern's amendment demanding an exit strategy, and that was before the Afghan election fiasco, when international forces failed at their key objective of providing security, and before McChrystal demanded a 60% increase in U.S. forces, on top of the 50% increase approved earlier this year. Our troops are "exhausted," Murtha says.Top Administration officials share the skepticism. Vice-President Biden, Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, and Afghan scholar Barnett Rubin, an advisor to Ambassador Holbrooke, have all been arguing against a troop increase: the political people on the grounds that the American people and Congress won't support it; Biden on the grounds that it would be a diversion from Pakistan; Rubin on the grounds that it would be counterproductive to reconciliation in Afghanistan.
Elite opinion is closely divided. This is a jump ball. It could go either way. And a decision by Nobel Laureate Obama to send 40,000 more U.S. troops is likely to severely constrain U.S. policy, abroad and at home, for many years.
Such a time calls for extraordinary efforts to mobilize public opinion to move policy.
National peace advocacy organizations, including Peace Action, Just Foreign Policy, Code Pink, United for Peace and Justice, and Voters for Peace, are launching such an extraordinary effort. At the joint website noescalation.org, we're posting the phone numbers of every Congressional office, and what is known so far about where they stand on the proposal to send 40,000 more U.S. troops. We're asking Americans to call Congressional offices and search the media for information on where each Member of Congress stands. And we're asking for that information to be reported back to the website noescalation.org.
The more Members of Congress take a clear stand against military escalation, the more likely President Obama is to reject McChrystal's request. Some Members of Congress are saying, "we're waiting to see what the President decides." But that nonsense is an obvious dodge. The time to affect the President's decision is obviously before he makes it, not afterwards. Of course some Members of Congress are going to avoid taking a position if they can. Our job is to smoke them out.

October 02, 2009

This letter, from Sgt. 1st Class Glen Tilson, was published in the Army Times, September 28, 2009

Letters To The Editor
9.28.09
Army Times
I just read the article in the Sept. 14 issue (“Plan would shrink raises to pay for other programs”).
I do not see how the Congressional Budget Office can even entertain a thought of reducing the pay raises of our soldiers.
They state that they are trying to cut pay raises to overstrength military occupational specialties and increase pay to critical MOSs. Most of us in the Army only get the yearly 3.4 percent raise (or whatever they give us).
How can anyone think about not giving the soldiers (all soldiers) a higher or at least the same type of pay raise our civilian counterparts are getting? I don’t see anyone in Congress getting shot at every day for their pay. And they get to go home at night.
I think it should be criminal for anyone to try to save money by taking it away from the soldiers. Stop some of the overspending or stop one or two of the new programs, but do not take money from the troops.
Sgt. 1st Class Glen Tilson, Fort Benning

October 01, 2009

This article, by Paul Reikoff, was published on the Iraq and Afghan Veterans of America website, October 1, 2009

Every year, Congress needs to pass 12 appropriations bills by October 1st to keep the federal government up and running. If lawmakers don’t meet this deadline, the government operates on temporary funding or shuts down.
And Congress rarely meets this deadline. In fact, 19 out of the last 22 years, Congress has failed to pass the VA budget on time. When the VA budget is late, the nation’s largest healthcare provider is forced to wait in limbo, relying on stop-gap funding measures. VA hospitals and clinics can’t plan for critical staffing and equipment needs, leading to long waits for appointments and rationed care. As a result, 6 million veterans who rely on the VA for health care pay the price for Congress’ bickering and inefficiency.
Despite repeated assurances that the VA budget would be passed on time this year, the September 30th deadline has come and gone. And the only thing that’s passed is another milestone: 20 out of the last 23 years, the veterans‘ health care budget is late. This year, the VA is not alone. The only budget that did pass on time was the one that funds salary checks for members of Congress. So Congress gets paid, and vets get stuck waiting. Again.
If Adam Vinatieri missed 20 out of his last 23 field goals, he’d be out of a job, and all of Indianapolis would be outraged. But Congress repeatedly misses the mark, gives itself a pay raise, and hardly anyone notices.
In the last two weeks especially, veterans have fallen victim to government inefficiency at its worst. First, it was thousands of late GI Bill payments and now it’s a late VA budget. Congress has spent months debating new government health care plans, and can’t even fund the ones we already have. Wait until Glenn Beck hears about this one. His head might actually explode.
With over half of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans still serving on active duty and poised to flood the VA system in the next few years, we cannot allow this ineffective funding process to continue.
The only way to ensure the highest quality of care our nation’s veterans deserve is to provide sufficient, timely, and predictable funding. In recent years, Congress has delivered record increases in VA funding. And when this year’s budget is approved, Congress will have increased VA funding by 15 percent over 2009 levels. But that can only happen if the budget is actually passed.
Ironically, the solution to chronic VA budget delays is wrapped up in this year’s proposed budget. “Advance appropriations,” or approving the VA health care budget one year in advance, is the top legislative priority for IAVA and many other leading veterans groups in 2009 and is included in the pending budget. Advanced appropriations would provide the VA with many more tools to prepare for the surge of veterans coming home and would put the years of tardy budgets behind us.
The men and women who have bravely served our country should not be forced to wait any longer for the care they have earned. If lawmakers aren’t pressured into passing the VA budget and advance appropriations and quickly, this trend will surely continue. And I’ll be writing a similar piece again this time next year. Veterans shouldn’t have to play this wait-and-see game, while Congress goes to the bank.

August 20, 2009

This article, by Mark Mazzetti, was posted to Common Dreams, August 20, 2009

WASHINGTON - The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials.
Executives from Blackwater, which has generated controversy because of its aggressive tactics in Iraq, helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The C.I.A. spent several million dollars on the program, which did not successfully capture or kill any terrorist suspects.
The fact that the C.I.A. used an outside company for the program was a major reason that Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A.'s director, became alarmed and called an emergency meeting in June to tell Congress that the agency had withheld details of the program for seven years, the officials said.
It is unclear whether the C.I.A. had planned to use the contractors to actually capture or kill Qaeda operatives, or just to help with training and surveillance in the program. American spy agencies have in recent years outsourced some highly controversial work, including the interrogation of prisoners. But government officials said that bringing outsiders into a program with lethal authority raised deep concerns about accountability in covert operations.
Officials said the C.I.A. did not have a formal contract with Blackwater for this program but instead had individual agreements with top company officials, including the founder, Erik D. Prince, a politically connected former member of the Navy Seals and the heir to a family fortune. Blackwater's work on the program actually ended years before Mr. Panetta took over the agency, after senior C.I.A. officials themselves questioned the wisdom of using outsiders in a targeted killing program.
Blackwater, which has changed its name, most recently to Xe Services, and is based in North Carolina, in recent years has received millions of dollars in government contracts, growing so large that the Bush administration said it was a necessary part of its war operation in Iraq.
It has also drawn controversy. Blackwater employees hired to guard American diplomats in Iraq were accused of using excessive force on several occasions, including shootings in Baghdad in 2007 in which 17 civilians were killed. Iraqi officials have since refused to give the company an operating license.
Several current and former government officials interviewed for this article spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing details of a still classified program.
Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman, declined to provide details about the canceled program, but he said that Mr. Panetta's decision on the assassination program was "clear and straightforward."
"Director Panetta thought this effort should be briefed to Congress, and he did so," Mr. Gimigliano said. "He also knew it hadn't been successful, so he ended it."
A Xe spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, also declined to give details of the program. But she praised Mr. Panetta for notifying Congress. "It is too easy to contract out work that you don't want to accept responsibility for," she said.
The C.I.A. this summer conducted an internal review of the assassination program that recently was presented to the White House and the Congressional intelligence committees. The officials said that the review stated that Mr. Panetta's predecessors did not believe that they needed to tell Congress because the program was not far enough developed.
The House Intelligence Committee is investigating why lawmakers were never told about the program. According to current and former government officials, former Vice President Dick Cheney told C.I.A. officers in 2002 that the spy agency did not need to inform Congress because the agency already had legal authority to kill Qaeda leaders.
One official familiar with the matter said that Mr. Panetta did not tell lawmakers that he believed that the C.I.A. had broken the law by withholding details about the program from Congress. Rather, the official said, Mr. Panetta said he believed that the program had moved beyond a planning stage and deserved Congressional scrutiny.
"It's wrong to think this counterterrorism program was confined to briefing slides or doodles on a cafeteria napkin," the official said. "It went well beyond that."
Current and former government officials said that the C.I.A.'s efforts to use paramilitary hit teams to kill Qaeda operatives ran into logistical, legal and diplomatic hurdles almost from the outset. These efforts had been run by the C.I.A.'s counterterrorism center, which runs operations against Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks.
In 2002, Blackwater won a classified contract to provide security for the C.I.A. station in Kabul, Afghanistan, and the company maintains other classified contracts with the C.I.A., current and former officials said.
Over the years, Blackwater has hired several former top C.I.A. officials, including Cofer Black, who ran the C.I.A. counterterrorism center immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks.
C.I.A. operatives also regularly use the company's training complex in North Carolina. The complex includes a shooting range used for sniper training.
An executive order signed by President Gerald R. Ford in 1976 barred the C.I.A. from carrying out assassinations, a direct response to revelations that the C.I.A. had initiated assassination plots against Fidel Castro of Cuba and other foreign politicians.
The Bush administration took the position that killing members of Al Qaeda, a terrorist group that attacked the United States and has pledged to attack it again, was no different from killing enemy soldiers in battle, and that therefore the agency was not constrained by the assassination ban.
But former intelligence officials said that employing private contractors to help hunt Qaeda operatives would pose significant legal and diplomatic risks, and they might not be protected in the same way government employees are.
Some Congressional Democrats have hinted that the program was just one of many that the Bush administration hid from Congressional scrutiny and have used the episode as a justification to delve deeper into other Bush-era counterterrorism programs.
But Republicans have criticized Mr. Panetta's decision to cancel the program, saying he created a tempest in a teapot.
"I think there was a little more drama and intrigue than was warranted," said Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.
Officials said that the C.I.A. program was devised partly as an alternative to missile strikes using drone aircraft, which have accidentally killed civilians and cannot be used in urban areas where some terrorists hide.
Yet with most top Qaeda operatives believed to be hiding in the remote mountains of Pakistan, the drones have remained the C.I.A.'s weapon of choice. Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has embraced the drone campaign because it presents a less risky option than sending paramilitary teams into Pakistan.

July 10, 2009

This position paper, by David Swanson, was posted to World Can't Wait, July 9, 2009

There are a million and one things that people can do to try to end the U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and to prevent new ones in Iran and elsewhere, as well as to close U.S. military bases in dozens of other nations around the world. Certain people are skilled at or interested in particular approaches, and nobody should be discouraged from contributing to the effort in their preferred ways. Far too often proposals to work for peace are needlessly framed as attacks on all strategies except one. But where new energy can be created or existing resources redirected, it is important that they go where most likely to succeed.
In my analysis, we should be focusing on three things, which for purposes of brevity and alliteration
I will call: Communications, Congress, and Counter recruitment / resistance. Communications encompasses all public discussion of the wars and impacts all other approaches, including targets I consider far less likely to be influenced by us than Congress, such as the president, generals, the heads of weapons companies, the heads of media companies, the people of Afghanistan, your racist neighbor, etc. If our communications strategy can change the behavior of any of these targets, terrific! We should be prepared to take advantage of such opportunities should they arise.
But the first place we are likely to be able to leverage successful communications will be the House of Representatives. Counter-recruitment / resistance is another area that overlaps with communications but involves much else as well, and it is a strategy that we continue to underestimate.COMMUNICATIONS
Our task is to communicate that:

the wars are ongoing and will not end without our efforts,

the wars must be ended,

the peace movement has had many successes already and should by no means give in to frustration,

the wars can be ended if a small fraction of the majority that wants them ended makes an effort,

we have to choose between warfare and healthcare / other social goods,

minimizing U.S. casualties will not satisfy the demands of the U.S. public,

neither maximizing nor minimizing foreign casualties will satisfy the demands of the U.S. public,

there is a personal cost to those who support wars and war crimes,

Congress members will face opposition through negative communications, disruption of their lives, and electoral challenges if they fund wars.

We don't have to communicate all of that in one interview on cable television, or violate any other laws of physics, but we DO have to communicate ALL of that. And getting our spokespeople on TV has to be part of how it is done. But primarily we need to create our own media and work with decent independent media outlets. Online media has developed to the point where it can influence broadcast and print media. And yet we are still quite capable of creating powerful online media. We cannot overlook the need to work with communities that lack internet access, or the need to use the internet to generate offline activities. But it is very hard to overestimate the importance to our efforts of the internet, and working to get more people access to it might be one of the most helpful efforts we can make.
We stopped Bush-Cheney from invading Iran. They intended to do so, and we prevented it -- largely by exposing the grounds for invading Iraq to be lies. There was no press conference at the White House to announce this failure of theirs and success of ours, but that should have no impact on our claiming a victory and making it known to those who require encouragement and optimism. On the other hand, we have allowed the wars to be spread to Pakistan with barely a peep of recognition, and by proxy to Gaza with only a weak and muddled response. And the push to attack Iran directly or by proxy remains.
We dominated the news and the elections in the United States and shifted power in the House, Senate, and White House to a different political party. And we ended up with a House, Senate, and White House that all favor continuing or expanding wars. But we compelled President Bush to agree to withdrawal from Iraqi localities by the end of last month, complete withdrawal from the nation by the end of 2011, and a treaty that the Iraqi people have the right to reject by the end of this month in a vote that would move the complete withdrawal date to one year from now. I still question the wisdom of our having silently accepted a treaty making three years of war without the consent of the U.S. Senate, but a better way to reject the treaty is now upon us. Our focus for the next month should be on insisting that the Iraqi people are permitted to vote the treaty up or down in a verifiable election (which, of course, means that they will vote it down if those voting bear any similarity to those who have been polled). Everyone who has expressed concern for the voting rights of Iranians should be required to do the same for Iraqis.
The other advantage of our having shifted the partisan balance in our government, even without fundamentally altering our government's approach to war, is that we no longer have to do so. We can now move on to replacing pro-war Democrats with pro-peace Democrats (or Independents, Greens, Republicans, Libertarians, etc.) The claim that we should keep quiet about peace in order to elect Democrats who will then (contradictorily) give us peace can no longer be made and can no longer get in the way. And the advantage of having elected a president of a different party, without having fundamentally changed anything, is that the claim that a new president will give us peace can now be replaced by consideration of whether we should look to presidents at all, or Congress instead, to do such things.
We kept the occupation of Iraq smaller than it would have been and prevented other invasions through the success of counter-recruitment efforts and resistance within the U.S. military. Bush-Cheney having pushed the military to the breaking point is not a story of their incompetence or love for war and empire. It is a story of our efforts pushing back against theirs. The United States will always push the military to the breaking point until we succeed in countering the current militaristic agenda, but our job (one of them) is to make what is available to be pushed smaller.
We need to discuss our successes because nobody else will, and because 70 percent of Americans basically agree with us and do nothing about it, largely because many people do not believe they have the power to change anything. We have been building organizations and websites and Email lists for these past several years, and we have been achieving some successes and coming very close to more. Yet, a common response to "Will you gather signatures on this petition for peace?" is "We've tried that before and it didn't end the war." But it did expose the war lies. It did force Alberto Gonzales out. It did come within 7 votes just last month of -- at least temporarily -- stopping the war funding. And while doing all of these things, the same old tired tools can also build larger organizations, and have been doing so.
I'm sure people told abolitionists not to print another newspaper because they'd printed one before and slavery was still around. Yet abolitionism was advancing despite not a single slave yet being freed. And we are advancing, but it is crucial to know where. We must absolutely put our signatures and our time and our money into those organizations that oppose war regardless of political party, and NOT into those organizations that claim to oppose war only when it allows criticism of a particular political party. (Here's a list of which is which: http://afterdowningstreet.org/32heroes The list cannot possibly be complete, of course, and I apologize for whomever I have left off the list of heroes, but the major organizations are all here, listed as either heroes or frauds.)
Just as we should continue to push the corporate media while focusing on building our own, we should continue to push the pseudo-peace organizations to do better, but we should focus on building those organizations that have consistently taken a principled stand and pushed with skill and intelligence (even if not with success) for peace.
"Healthcare Not Warfare" should be our cry (following the example of Progressive Democrats of America), along with "Housing Not Warfare," "Jobs Not Warfare," "Schools Not Warfare," etc. We have to force recognition of the financial choice before us. In that choice we find a solution to the healthcare debate that is almost too easy to be believed, but deadly real. And we find a solution to the misconception that war does not impact the "Homeland." This is a discussion that should discuss the current wars as part of an expansion of military bases around the world, bases that make us less safe but cost us over $100 billion every year. The discussion should include the non-war military budget and the trade-offs involved. We should work harder to build alliances with people and groups focused on advocating for all the things we cannot pay for because we pay for weapons and wars.
But our communications strategy should be dominated by our true central reason for opposing wars, not any secondary reason that we imagine will move someone else. If wars are made cheaper and more efficient we will still oppose them, and that is a real possibility. If American casualties are reduced, we will still oppose wars, and that is the case at the moment. If smart decisions in military terms replace comical blunders, we will oppose wars all the more, and that may be happening. Fundamentally, we oppose wars because they kill people and they are part of hostile occupations that make people around the world hate and resent our nation. When a group like Brave New Films documents the impact of our war on the people of Afghanistan, we should promote those films as far as we are able. When an election leads to the corporate media humanizing the people of Iran, we should highlight that and ask why, if we do not want them killed by riot police, we should want them killed by bombs.
There is enormous potential, but uncertain, value in seeking to end and discourage wars by holding war criminals accountable for their crimes. Those working to end torture are right to emphasize that we tortured in order to generate false justifications for war, even after the war had begun. Those working to end war should emphasize that we tortured people in order to support the lies that at least one of the wars, and arguably all of them, is based on. Every war crime for which we are able to hold anyone accountable by exposing their crimes, unelecting them, impeaching them, finding them liable in civil suits, and prosecuting them at home or abroad, should be discussed as part of the ongoing wars. Congress members should understand that we consider their funding of wars to constitute a war crime. And they should understand that we require them to place peace before party.
One useful tool for mass communications is mass rallies. As argued below, our targets should be Congress members. National mass actions should be focused on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Local actions should target local Congress members. There was an action earlier this year on Capitol Hill aimed at cleaning up the local power plant and raising the demand for action on the climate. While that struggle is far from over, the march and protest suggested a useful approach. A large number of people, including young people, were organized to march and to risk arrest. But people were invited to march without risking arrest, thus boosting the crowd size and reducing the chances of anyone being arrested. This action was held on a weekday with Congress in session, and marched adjacent to the House office buildings. An action like this one on the eighth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, on Wednesday, October 7th, strikes me as the most obvious way to send a powerful message of opposition to wars. Combined, of course, with lobby meetings and in-district actions. And backed by lots of money and staff time.
Where do we get lots of money and staff time? That's where we'll need to be very good communicators. But there are wealthy people tired of funding politicians and ready to fund citizens, not to mention people with money who have watched Republicans prosecute and imprison top Democratic donors like Paul Minor and then watched the Democrats not lift a finger in their defense. There are no limits on contributions to peace and justice groups, and almost no limits on what we could accomplish if funded. More importantly, there are ways to influence Congress that do not require putting anyone on a bus and can be done largely by volunteers -- yes, in their pajamas in the basement eating Cheetos. Read on.CONGRESS
While we have relatively little in the way of carrots or sticks with which to influence a president or a weapons maker (and influencing the military is discussed below), we have the ability to influence Congress members, at least those who represent districts rather than large states. And we have the ability to end the wars by succeeding only in the House of Representatives. We do not need to persuade a single senator or the president or any cabinet secretaries or any news producers. If we can do so, great. But we can end the wars by winning in the House of Representatives alone. This is because it takes two houses and the president to make a bill a law, but it only takes one house to prevent a bill from becoming law.
The House of Representatives is supposed to represent us and yet, on matters of war as on most other things, does not. Why not? Well, many flaws weaken our elections system, but on any given vote three major corrupting factors can usually be pointed to: party, media, and dollars. On an issue like healthcare, as on many issues, these factors should be listed in the opposite order. It is the dollars of corporate interests that do the greatest share of the corrupting. But on matters of war, party is the greatest corruptor. Of course, political parties are the largest funders of campaigns, so money is still right at the top. Members of Congress in both political parties have voted to fund these wars, over the wishes of their constituents, because their party leadership has told them to do so. Parties can promise money, committee memberships, chairmanships, votes on bills and amendments and earmarks, and press events in a member's district with cabinet members and presidents. Parties can threaten to withhold money, back a challenger, block measures from reaching the floor, and withhold chairmanships. It is very difficult and very rare for Congress members to oppose their parties' strong demands. But it is also rare for citizens to press them to do so, in part because many citizens and the groups through which they approach activism also take their orders from political parties.
The experience of opposing the most recent war supplemental bill, which was combined with funding for the International Monetary Fund, is instructive, especially as Congressman John Murtha has already indicated that there will be another war supplemental bill this year. Because all the Republicans in the House opposed the bill due to the IMF measure (five of them switching their votes to yes only after it had passed), 39 Democrats could have stopped the bill. This would have forced separate votes on the war and the IMF, and both might have passed. Certainly the war would have. But it would have created a serious block of peace votes in the House willing to vote for peace even when it mattered and the Democratic Party commanded otherwise. In the end, we persuaded 32 Democrats to vote No (two of them only in opposition to the IMF, 30 of them in opposition to at least the war). So we actually did establish a block of peace voters. It just contained 30 people instead of 39. And of those 30 people, three, Dennis Kucinich, Jim McGovern, and Lynn Woolsey actually urged their colleagues to vote No. This gives us 30 votes we can count on if we work like hell to hold them, and three leaders we can work with to whip together a larger caucus. And while we lost this vote, we exacted a price. We compelled the White House and the Democratic Party leadership to spend a week working on little other than bribing and blackmailing Congress members. And it will take many weeks to fulfill all the promises made. My own Congressman, who opposed the IMF but voted for it, has thus far held press events promoting himself in his district with the House Majority Leader, with the two top environmental officials in the White House, and has an event scheduled here this month with two members of the cabinet.
Over the past years, we have -- more often than not -- lacked the coordination and ability to push back hard against such intense lobbying from the other side. This time we surprised Congress and ourselves. Key to this effort was public whipping. We didn't have eight different peace groups keeping their own whip lists of who had promised them what. We had 8,000 citizen lobbyists feeding their reports to one website where the whip count was kept public, and where we promised to thank or spank people as appropriate once they had voted for peace or war. Critical to this effort were all the usual off-line activities of people in each Congress member's district. But the public whipping was central. It organized and encouraged the activism. It inspired the blogging. It infiltrated the corporate media.
Here's a history of this campaign:http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/43292
Here's the whip list:http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/Supplemental
Sadly, we've barely followed through on our promises to thank and spank, activities for which the Backbone Campaign offers tools and assistance. We should be celebrating and denouncing those who came through and those who let us down with at least as much energy as we threatened to do so. Otherwise we lose our credibility, and next time will be harder rather than easier. Disturbingly, even some who seemed willing to threaten repercussions to Democrats for voting yes appeared to decide afterwards that it would be inappropriate to follow through, especially since some other Democrats, not to mention most of the Republicans, were worse and never even pretended to be with us. But we're not handing out prizes in the afterlife here. We're trying to move those who might be moved.
Now, there is another reason why the next time is almost guaranteed to be harder. Unless the Democrats choose to include something else as strongly opposed by Republicans as the IMF, most of the Republicans can be expected to vote Yes. There may be nine who oppose the war funding. Combining them with the 30 Democrats gives us our block of 39 after all. (These would be the nine who voted No on the war supplemental before the IMF was added to it. But that was an easy vote. By that measure we had 51 Democrats, so these nine are not solid.) This means that, in a worst case scenario, we need to find -- in addition to these nine -- not 39 No votes, but 209 No votes, and most of them from Democrats. We're starting at 39 if we can hold them and need 179 more. This should not be considered impossible, not if we are succeeding at the communications strategy above and the counter-recruitment / resistance below. If most of the Congress members we have on our side found five more who would vote with them, we'd have a comfortable majority. We need to develop a system to whip Congress members to whip other Congress members. We also have the advantage of being able to tell them this time that when they told us last time that they were voting for the last war supplemental it was a lie.
This strategy of cutting off the funding for war, which can and should be used against standard military/war budget bills as well as supplementals, has always struck some people as a harder hill to climb than passing bills and amendments and resolutions that we approve of, steps that move us somehow in the direction of peace even while funding war. But this thinking ignores the existence of the United States Senate. While we can block a bill in the House, we have to pass a bill in both the House and Senate, and the chances of a good bill passing the Senate are smaller than Dick Cheney passing through the eye of a needle. There may be measures we want to advance in the House for communications purposes. And there may be measures we can persuade the House to slip into other bills the Senate wants to pass. But none of this should be our focus.
Bills that we might want to move in the House for communications purposes might include Rep. McGovern's bill requiring an exit strategy for Afghanistan, or legislation that turned the slogan of "Healthcare Not Welfare" into policy. A bill requiring that for every dollar spent on wars and military at least 25 cents must go into a fund for single-payer healthcare would be rhetorically useful. You can imagine the multitude of possibilities, as well as the impact if such a discussion were to penetrate the healthcare debate.
Bills that we might slip something very useful into and conceivably still get passed include House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's "paygo" bill, which has 159 cosponsors and the support of the Democratic leadership and the White House. This bill requires that any expense be paid for by a tax increase or a cutback elsewhere. But the bill makes an exception for "emergency" legislation, which is of course what war supplementals are claimed to be. An amendment to the paygo bill stipulating that no war already in progress for over five years is an "emergency" would, I think, effectively impose a paygo requirement on war supplementals. And suddenly you'd be unable to pass a war supplemental without explaining where the money was going to come from. In such a situation, it's conceivable that Blue Dogs and Republicans would join us faster than Progressives.
Congress can do other useful things as well, things that it is easier to get them to do. The House can pass a resolution supporting the right of the Iraqi people to a verifiable election this month on whether to agree to the treaty mislabeled a Status of Forces Agreement. The House can hold hearings on the subject. Advancing that issue, through Congress and elsewhere, should be our immediate priority. And in the back of our heads should be plans to demand a public vote for the people of Afghanistan.
We should also be working to sign incumbent and challenger candidates in the 2010 congressional elections onto a platform committing them to voting no funds to continue wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan. It's not that we can trust them to keep their word. Only intense immediate pressure can control them. The point is to begin shaping the election in terms of how they will vote on war money between now and the election.COUNTER RECRUITMENT
I've gone on at too much length to burden you with a detailed discussion of counter-recruitment and resistance when others can provide more expertise than I. The National Network Opposing Militarization of Youth at http://nnomy.org provides excellent resources on the crucial work of keeping recruiters out of schools. NNOMY is holding a national conference July 17-19 in Chicago, and you are invited.
Courage to Resist at http://www.couragetoresist.org provides up-to-date information on efforts within the US military to refuse illegal orders.
Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd's new book "Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent" is good background, as is "Army of None: Strategies to Counter Military Recruitment, End War and Build a Better World," by Aimee Allison and David Solnit.
As Rumsfeld said, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want. We must deny them the army they want. If we succeed beyond our wildest dreams for the next decade, at some point it might make sense to take into consideration the actual defense needs of the United States.
At this point, the best thing our military could do to defend us would be to stop endangering us by doing everything it is doing.COME TOGETHER RIGHT NOW
There's a national conference at which strategies to end the wars will be deliberated happening in Pittsburgh on July 10-12, and you should try to be there. The event is organized by the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations at https://www.natassembly.org
I've submitted the following action proposal to the assembly and I hope to see you there.ACTION PROPOSAL
Organize a mass protest march and civil resistance against war funding at House side of Capitol Hill on the 8th anniversary of invading Afghanistan, on Wednesday, October 7th. The House of Representatives is where we have the greatest chance of ending these wars. If we cut off the funding there, nothing else is needed. We can influence House members with activities in districts, online, in the media, and on Capitol Hill. But not on a weekend when they aren't there. We need to be present on a weekday and lobby them before and after we march. There was an action earlier this year on Capitol Hill aimed at cleaning up the local power plant and raising the demand for action on the climate. While that struggle is far from over, the march and protest suggested a useful approach. A large number of people, including young people, were organized to march and to risk arrest. But people were invited to march without risking arrest, thus boosting the crowd size and reducing the chances of anyone being arrested.
This action was held on a weekday with Congress in session, and marched adjacent to the House office buildings. An action like this one on the eighth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, on Wednesday, October 7th, could send a powerful message of opposition to wars. Combined, of course, with lobby meetings and in-district actions. While such an action would be open to those willing to risk arrest and those not willing to do so, it would indeed fail to include those unable to participate on a Wednesday (except by making phone calls and holding in-district events). However, it WOULD include the people we intend to influence but which the corporate media cannot be counted on to inform of our doings over a weekend. Some members of Congress would even JOIN us.

April 02, 2009

This article, by Jason Leopold, was posted to the Public Record, March 31, 2009

Doug Feith, the former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, is best known for cooking up bogus prewar Iraq intelligence linking Iraq and al-Qaeda and 9/11.
But in addition to his duties to his duties stove piping phony intelligence directly to former Vice President Dick Cheney, Feith was also a key member of a small working group of Defense Department officials who oversaw the implementation of “enhanced interrogation techniques” at Guantanamo Bay that has been widely regarded as torture.
Last weekend, Spain’s investigating magistrate Baltasar Garzon, who issued an arrest warrant for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998, ordered prosecutors to investigate Feith and five other senior Bush administration officials for sanctioning torture at the prison facility.
On Sunday, Feith responded to the charges. He told the BBC he that "the charges as related to me make no sense.”
"They criticize me for promoting a controversial position that I never advocated," Feith claimed.But Feith’s denials ring hollow.
The allegations against Feith contained in the 98-page complaint filed in March 2008 by human rights lawyer Gonzalo Boye and the Association for the [Dignity] was largely gleaned from a lengthy interview Feith gave to international attorney and University College London professor Phillpe Sands. Sands is the author of “Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values.
The other Bush officials named in the complaint are: former Justice Department attorneys John Yoo and Jay Bybee, Alberto Gonzales, Cheney’s counsel David Addington, and former Pentagon general counsel William Haynes, II. The charges cited in the complaint against these officials was also largely based on material Sands cited in his book about the roles they played in sanctioning torture.
Last year, in response to questions by Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, Condoleezza Rice, who, as National Security Adviser, was part of a working group that included Haynes, Yoo, Addington and Gonzales, said interrogation methods were discussed as early as the summer of 2002 and Yoo provided legal advice at “several” meetings that she attended. She said the DOJ’s advice on the interrogation program “was being coordinated by Counsel to the President Alberto Gonzales.”
Yoo met with Gonzales and Addington to discuss the subjects he intended to address in two August 2002 torture memos, according to a declassified summary of the Armed Services Committee report.Feith’s was also included in the discussions.
Sands wrote that as early as 2002, “Feith’s job was to provide advice across a wide range of issues, and the issues came to include advice on the Geneva Conventions and the conduct of military interrogations.”
Feith told Sands that he “played a major role in” George W. Bush’s decision to sign a Feb. 7, 2002 action memorandum suspending the Geneva Conventions for al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners who were imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.
The memo did say that prisoners had to be treated “humanely,” but Feith told Sands the verbiage needed “to be fleshed out.” “But it’s a fine phrase—‘humane treatment,’” Feith added. Still, even with the phrase intact, the Common Article 3 restrictions against torture and “outrages upon personal dignity” were removed.Feith said 2002 was a special year for him.
“This year I was really a player,” Feith told Sands.
“I asked him whether, in the end, he was at all concerned that the Geneva decision might have diminished America’s moral authority,” Sands wrote. “He was not. ‘The problem with moral authority,’ [Feith] said, was ‘people who should know better, like yourself, siding with the assholes, to put it crudely.’”
“Douglas Feith had a long-standing intellectual interest in Geneva, and for many years had opposed legal protections for terrorists under international law” Sands wrote in his book. “He referred me to an article he had written in 1985, in The National Interest, setting out his basic view. Geneva provided incentives to play by the rules; those who chose not to follow the rules, he argued, shouldn’t be allowed to rely on them, or else the whole Geneva structure would collapse. The only way to protect Geneva, in other words, was sometimes to limit its scope. To uphold Geneva’s protections, you might have to cast them aside.”
In addition to Sands’ account, the Senate Armed Services Committee and the American Civil Liberties Union have released documents showing that Haynes regularly briefed Feith about a list of aggressive interrogation techniques for use against “high-value” Guantanamo detainees.
According to an executive summary of the Armed Services Committee report released last December, “techniques such as stress positions, removal of clothing, use of phobias (such as fear of dogs), and deprivation of light and auditory stimuli were all recommended for approval.”
In November 2002, Haynes sent Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld a memo stating that he “had discussed the issue [of enhanced interrogations] with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, and General [Richard] Myers and that he believed they concurred in his recommendation.”
The Senate Armed Services Committee is expected to release a declassified version of its report that will include a full account of Feith’s role in implementing a policy of torture at Guantanamo. The report is 200 pages, contains 2,000 footnotes, and will reveal a wealth of new information about the genesis of the Bush administration's interrogation policies, according to these sources. The investigation relied upon the testimony of 70 people, generated 38,000 pages of documents, and took 18 months to complete.
Other documents released last year show that Feith worked closely with Pentagon general counsel William Haynes II in 2002 on an Army and Air Force survival-training program called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE), which were meant to prepare U.S. soldiers for abuse they might suffer if captured by an outlaw regime, against detainees at Guantanamo. One of the SERE techniques used against detainees was waterboarding.
Moreover, Feith and Haynes were members of a Pentagon "working group" that met from January through March 2003 and prepared a report for Rumsfeld stating what methods military interrogators could use to extract information from a prisoner at Guantanamo. Yoo worked on the legal memo for the group.
Early drafts of the report advocated intimidating prisoners with dogs, removing prisoners' clothing, shaving their beards, slapping prisoners in the face and waterboarding.
Though some of the more extreme techniques were dropped as the list was winnowed down to 24 from 35, the final set of methods still included tactics for isolating and demeaning a detainee, known as "pride and ego down."
Such degrading tactics violated the Geneva Convention, which bars abusive or demeaning treatment of captives.
Rumsfeld signed the Feith’s and Haynes final report on April 2, 2003, two weeks after Bush ordered U.S. forces to invade Iraq.
One year later, photos depicting U.S. soldiers abusing and humiliating detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were publicly released.
According to a report by a panel headed by James Schlesinger on the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses in 2004, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez said Bush’s Feb. 7, 2002, memo suspending Geneva Conventions, which Feith had said he was principally responsible for, led him to implement "additional, tougher measures" against detainees.

March 31, 2009

An Open Letter to the Peace/Anti-War Movement from Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, and Veterans For Peace

After six years of war and the historic election of a new President, we as veterans, military and Gold Star families felt an urgent need to reach out to the larger peace/anti-war movements to make our position on Iraq clear during this time of political and economic uncertainty. Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out and Veterans For Peace continue to stand together in our demand to Bring the Troops Home Now! We ask all those who have stood with us in the past to stay faithful to the cause.
President Obama has announced a plan to gradually reduce troop levels in Iraq. Many in the peace/anti-war movements are breathing a sigh of relief, and suggesting that it is time for us to scale back our efforts to bring an end to the occupation of Iraq. But for our troops on the ground, their families and the Iraqi people, the nightmare continues. They need all of us to stay in the struggle. IVAW, MFSO and VFP have been long united in our call for an immediate and complete end to the occupation of Iraq and will not shift our stance under any circumstances.
President Obama's plan will result in more casualties and suffering for U.S. troops, their families and Iraqis. To the American public facing hard times here at home, two and a half more years of occupation may not sound like that long -- but for our troops and their families it means two and a half more years of fear, pain, and separation in a war and occupation based on lies.
Hundreds of the troops deployed in the next two and a half years will not come home alive. Many more will return forever scarred by deep wounds to their bodies, minds, and spirits. Well over a million Iraqis have died as a result of this war -- many more will be killed as the occupation continues.
We cannot afford the cost of empire. Today we are in the midst of the worst economic crisis most of us have seen in our lifetimes. Yet our government continues to allow the occupation to drain $10 billion a month from our nation's coffers. Meanwhile, veterans and military families struggle to put food on the table and get decent housing and adequate medical care. Women and men who risked their lives for this country are often forced to fight tooth and nail to get health care from an underfunded and overburdened Veterans Administration. Hundreds of thousands of veterans are homeless.
The occupation of Iraq is the source of the violence not the solution. Living under occupation the people of Iraq are held back from taking control of their own lives to determine their destiny. The continued U.S. military presence there is a cause of the violence they face, not its solution. U.S. continued interference contradicts the principles of democracy and self-determination our country was founded on.
IVAW, MFSO and VFP will continue to keep pressure on Congress and the President to bring all our troops home from Iraq NOW, ensure that veterans receive the care they need and deserve, and that the U.S. provides resources to rebuild a country we destroyed. But we cannot do that alone. We need your help to reach out to the vast majority of the American people who are completely isolated from the realities of this war. Please don't abandon this struggle or shift your position before the occupation is over and our veterans and the Iraqi people are on the path to healing.
Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) was founded by Iraq war veterans in July 2004 at the annual convention of Veterans for Peace (VFP) in Boston to give a voice to the large number of active duty service people and veterans who are against this war, but are under various pressures to remain silent. From its inception, IVAW has called for: Immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces in Iraq; reparations for the human and structural damages Iraq has suffered, and stopping the corporate pillaging of Iraq so that their people can control their own lives and future; and dull benefits, adequate healthcare (including mental health), and other supports for returning servicemen and women. IVAW's membership includes recent veterans and active duty servicemen and women from all branches of military service, National Guard members, and reservists who have served in the United States military since September 11, 2001.
Military Families Speak Out is an organization of people opposed to the war in Iraq who have relatives or loved ones who are currently in the military or who have served in the military since the buildup to the Iraq war in the fall of 2002. Formed by two families in November of 2002, MFSO now has over 4,000 member families. MFSO's national chapter, Gold Star Families Speak Out includes families whose loved ones have died as a result of the war in Iraq.
Founded in 1985, Veterans for Peace is a national organization of men and women veterans of all eras and duty stations spanning the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), World War II, the Korean, Vietnam, Gulf and current Iraq wars as well as other conflicts cold or hot. It has chapters in nearly every state in the union and is headquartered in St. Louis, MO. Our collective experience tells us wars are easy to start and hard to stop and that those hurt are often the innocent. Thus, other means of problem solving are necessary. Veterans For Peace is an official Non- Governmental Organization (NGO) represented at the U.N.